Gin & Bare It

It’s incredible. Truly. That even now the people at the top are still expecting their big fat slice, while the people at the bottom of the business ladder have absolutely no choice but get in even more hock to them just for half a chance to stay afloat.

We know people are going to die. They already have. But, let’s not panic – it will all be over by the end of June, seems to be the general gist; like, if hanging on to all this bailout money just long enough and things go back to normal by then people will be so excited and elated with their new found freedom, they’ll be too busy celebrating to put in a claim kinda thing.

Some people think the Bojos, Trumps and Trudeaus of the world are doing a grand/ awesome/ okay, eh, job of it, while others . . . not so much.

Perhaps a bigger question is are they doing anything at all, given construction workers still being considered essential well into things is/was an issue in numerous major cities the planet over.

Unfortunately, talking about that kinda things conjures—SHAZAM!!!—images of conspiracy theorists and tinfoil hats, aliens locked in underground bunkers, lizards behind all the masks, etc, so we won’t go there, we’ll have a poem instead:

let us bare big teeth
with rapturous laughter
as horses neigh
in the face of disaster
we can get through this
and we will
repeating a mantra
to Sunday Funday
all week long
while trying to ignore
how dreams of a lifetime
the long leisurely pension
quickly become
bloody Sunday ad infinitum
circa nineteen-eighty-three
no pubs, shops or stores
just rerun TV
so compensate with
a big slap-up dinner
left-over from summer
burger rolls in the freezer
some breaded-chicken
a can of halved-peaches
while hoping the shop’s
are soon doing much better
showing some decency
with toilet paper
every other calamity
floods, fires
environmental contamination
gone into oblivion
with the football season
nothing to see there
too busy now
finding new memes
to fly in the face of
I was given a letter
P
persevere and post
ten favourite
album covers
without
description or reason
except to keep
up with the Joneses
hoping the net doesn’t
drop
or how will they know
about dinner in pyjamas
all the biscuits/cake scoffed
for breakfast binge watching
tiger king and bake-off
learning the hard way
that teachers have passed
the buck
of birds and bees on
to un-expecting parents
spending lock-down
without contraception
so in nine months
what will we call them
John and Jenny Corona
or the Covid-19 kids
with the big horse teeth
like the parents who bared them
through boredom and grief